Just Stuff

My girl is sick. She's awfully tough this one, and while she was floppy in the morning, she sprang back in the afternoon. We spent some time sorting out my hellish recipe book. An excuse to cut and paste really, but useful at the same time. It really was a disaster.

When we finished P4 drew me a picture in it, just to make it more special.

I'm actually reassuring myself here, as she looks fine in the pics, but she is really hot and unwell tonight. Why do they always get sicker at night? It's so scary.

Speaking of scary, I have upped the stakes in the little war I'm having. With a cat. The evil cat that forced me to cover both veggie gardens in bird mesh to stop it pooing all over my lettuces. Now the little blighter simply poos ON TOP OF the mesh??!!! What is that about?

Luckily I have a rose bush I needed to prune. Take that little cat bottom.

ETA - Just posted this and read your comment from yesterday Iz. Not bad - the wrap-around version though. Goes rather stonkingly well with the cardy I'm knitting, which I would like to say was good planning, but since I'm allergic to planning, is obviously a rather lucky fluke.

Not The Pics I Planned

Was going to show you cute pics of P4 at her friend's school toy tea party, but the silly temporary camera has decided to eat them. Grrr. Six weeks of no camera and counting and I'm Fed. Up. with it.

Still, in happier news, a parcel arrived sewn together in cotton, with waxy seals and great stamps, and knowing I had new - ethical even - clothes inside made it all rather delightful. Not often that the wrapping is almost as exciting as what's inside.

Using the unpick to open it caused some excitement in these parts.

Finding out there was nothing inside for them, did not. Ha!

Living With A Seven-Year-Old Boy

I finished washing a load of clothes, and discovered a small jacket with both pockets entirely full of stones.

I found a catapult sellotaped to a tree.

I watched him play guitar with his Dad.

I walked him to school, and a seven-year-old boy I had never met before came up to us in the classroom and told me with earnest eyes that L7 "is the cleverest person in our class. He knows everything." A more genuine report than national standards could ever give.

I love having this little boy around.

Oh Hold Your Scoff!

I must admit I've always found crochet a bit ugly. Hip knitting's nerdy cousin. But recently. . . I'm gonna admit to a hankering for the hook. Firstly because someone flasher than me linked to a site with this on it (yeah, I borrowed the picture because I could link on Ravelry, but then you couldn't see it unless you were already a nerd, and I could link to it on the blog site but then you'd have to scroll past a million photos of really questionable things - including, of course, a tissue box cover - which would make you scoff at my latest intrigue, to get to it, although the name alone does make me wanna do it more - Fuck Yeah Granny Square) :

So anyway, remember I was trying to work out what to do with this (the pretty silk, not the burnt rice - I threw that out) so I thought wouldn't it be all ironic and chic to make granny squares out of fancy spun silk, and make them into a bedspread for P4 (only because her bed is smaller than mine)? Only flaw in the plan was I had no idea what a crochet hook was for if it wasn't picking up dropped knitting stitches. So I trudged along to the library, found a book that turned out to be more than useless and accidentally found another book with this in it:

Now I'm not planning on getting married again any time soon, crocheting myself a large white dress, or walking around with my head on a mysterious angle, but I did like the schematic of it all rather a lot:

and suddenly I was obsessed with the possibility of making all those little circles in pure silk that I had spun myself and creating the most beautiful, but rather small, cream heirloom blanket ever. Only problem was I still had no idea how to crochet even one stitch with those hopeless books, so I set about learning at 10.30 one night, after a couple of glasses of wine and with a hefty dose of PMT, from a series of painfully slow in the boring parts and freakishly speedy in the actual stitching parts, youtube videos. It wasn't a pretty evening.

Then as luck would have it, I had a friend need a bed for the night last night, and it turns out she learnt the humble art of the granny square aged six!! So although she was unsure of what everything was called or how to read a pattern, she knew all about wielding that illusive hook and yarn.

Tada! A long-winded explanation for My Own Very First Granny Square:


Well, the first one I finished that is, because I unravelled My Own Very First Granny Irregular Polygon in a fit of pique the night before.

So today I have been busy whilst supervising my kids playing with friends. Okay there wasn't too much supervision going on, but there was this:


And I'll have you know the wibbly wobbly ones only look like that because they are from the homespun silk, and also because I was adept enough to think 'what might happen if I were to CH3 rather than CH1?' which seems pretty bloody accomplished, even if a bad idea, on day two of square-ness if you ask me. And see that round bit? From the wedding dress-that-isn't-gonna-be pattern no less. Uh huh.

Beginnings of an heirloom, and no brown and tan acrylic in sight I tell ya.

Still Going. . .

Watching L&P watch OK GO and the Rube Goldberg video was almost as much fun as watching it myself for the first time. This is them at 7.30 this morning:

I was going to show you the machines they made, but that 20 seconds of video took about half an hour to upload, so I'm gonna flag it till tomorrow.

Night!

Interesting People

Now I totally stole this from cool Nikki's blog, because she is all yoof-full and always finds interesting things. I'm pretty sure she'll forgive me though and chalk it up to flattery. I think Iz will like this:

and so will L7. His question to me today was what the opposite to 'parallel' could be since it wasn't 'horizontal' or 'vertical'. I decided on 'bisected/ing' but now I think about it that is wrong? Intersecting might have been better eh? Anyhow, it was the question that was interesting, rather than the below par, on the fly whilst driving, answer.

Things To Play With

When you are 4 - playdough:

When you are [almost] ten times that - fibre:

Black alpaca - mmmmmmmmmmmm. . .

We are alike though. This girl top and tails her chips "because I like the crunchy bits"

Me too honey. I like the middles too though.

Old Flannels and Stuff

I figure it's been a while since I actually posted pics of L&P considering the blog is named after them, but then I found this on the memory card. P4 had gone on a picture spree while I folded the washing. She told me she needed three flannels and this is what she shot, no cropping, in this order:

Which I thought was interesting and arty, or at least mathematically minded, but I suppose not necessarily blogsworthy, being a bunch of old flannels and all.

So here you go Mutti, (who is away and missing them) pics galore. . .

P4 having a frozen blueberry pig out.

L7 post haircut. He is still very wary of the ear bit, somewhat bending the line between caution and woosiness. But he's pretty cute anyway.

Reason #368 To Have Children

You can make them a toupee with silk fibre, and they look really cute.

Actually, that is more a reason to make your friend have them. That way you get to do tricks on them to make yourself giggle, but still have a full night's sleep. Thanks for coming to play B-zero.

Almost Fire And Some Pretty Silk

This is what a pan looks like after it has been left on the gas element on high for an hour while no-one is in the house.


Fortunately, the house still looks the same as it used too. Smells pretty special though.

After making that big mess, I also made something pretty. I spun some pure silk into this luminous yarn. Need to decide what to do with it.

After two more tries I absolutely can't upload my video, so I give up. P4 is pretty cute though. You'll just have to take my word for it.

My video won't upload. I'm grumpy about it.

Here look at this instead. Ewwwwww. . .

Spider silk cloth.

An Intervention?

Something strange arrived addressed to me personally in the post today. A magazine for the senior generation.

The post-it reads:

Saw this and thought it might be a good read for one on the cusp of her twilight years such as yourself! Love a concerned family member.

Why thank you Concerned Family Member. I shall hang it off the zimmer frame and give it a read when I take out my teeth tonight.

Actually Blokey Husband has already read it and likes this chap:

a Franciscan monk turned heavy metal singer.

I'm saving up some good doily patterns to share with you Concerned Family Member.

Disco Happiness

Still having camera drama so sorry about picture funk. Four weeks and they don't even have the part yet. ARGH!

But anyway, this is realistic, 'cos it was dark. Kindy disco. Cute.

L7 was super sweet dancing at his school disco yesterday too. Wish I could have captured it to save and share here. On the way home, still dancing down the dark street, he told me a great joke.

-What's brown and sticky?













-A stick!

Hee hee.

To A Faintly Elderly Aunty

Happy Brthday Aunty Izzie. We ate your cake.

There was to be a heartwarming family rendition of Happy Birthday, but fortunately for you the gods conspired and took total control of every battery in the house and refused to let me video it. Narrow escape.

We love you anyway.

There was also chicken play and dancing with friends from kindy and a disco and cake overflow blobs that Mutti, in a playful mood after her exam, did ghastly things with (you know her - you can guess) but I'll spare you all that too.

A Perfect Day For:

Getting even with those pesky neighbourhood cats. Hard to see but I have fortified the garden with bird mesh. NO MORE cat poo near my spring onions. I have also planted a million radishes to mess with their furry feline botties. Ha!



Admiring the sky. And our (admittedly laughable) sea view before those trees get too big.

Doing amazing maths at kindy.

Opening your first bank account, and going for hot chocolate to celebrate.

(This was totally cute - they gave L7 the helicopter piggy bank when we opened the account, then we had to line up at the teller to deposit his savings. While we were waiting he asked me "I don't understand - is this the thing they will put my money in inside the bank?" Imagine the vault full of little helicopters bulging with cash. Hee.)

Pulling faces at your ma. Always a perfect day for that.

Cutest Hat In The Known Universe

Okay, so I'm not adverse to a touch of hyperbole. Made myself a cute hat. Alpaca and silk blend softness. I know, is it kinda weird that I drooled over this site for the last few days? I don't usually drool around sheep.

Anyway, back to reality which was kinda average today, apart from this:


I am also aware that I'm wearing my coat in the bathroom, but I had just walked in the door okay?

Why I'm Baking Bread Again This Morning

One Of My Favourite Things

is art. Kids' drawings included. I was worrying recently that I managed to have two children who seem to have given up on drawing. One because he is too busy reading and spying, and one just to be perverse.

This evening P4 announced that she was going to draw me a tattoo after dinner. (See - don't even have to nag - P4 is picking up on the pressing need for some skin art around here.) I'm going to make the appointment for my birthday, so L&P decided they would work on some designs.

P4 had some weird epiphany, and told me she had forgotten about drawing, and all children draw, and she thought she might be bad but actually she was good at it. Yay! Lookie at her lovely self-portrait. Included are eyelashes (on the brows), shoulders and "my armpits". Important details.


Then L7 decided he was going to jump on the drawing (also known as getting out of bedtime) bandwagon, but he didn't know what to draw. I asked for a family portrait.

He's a bit weird L7. Our family begins with a hexagon. It has six sides because there are six of us. Mum, Dad, L7, P4, Baboo and Big Lambie. Not so hot on the portraiture, but check out that freehand hexagon! I swear it is better than I could do. Then there is the important classification - some of us are human, some of us are superhero toys. He had to check with P4 to clarify whether Big Lambie was also a superhero. Apparently yes.

I also love the laces fascination. You can tell who has recently learnt to tie, and who is still wearing velcro sandals :)


A picture and a taxonomy in one.

The Boy Says:

Had to happen. Cute stage :)

Fizzy

Homemade Sherbet

1 cup icing sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp citric acid
1 tsp tartaric acid
2 tbsps vitafresh drink powder

Grind citric and tartaric acid to a fine powder. Mix all ingredients. Slurp. Fizz.

Don't Leave Home

One camera in the shop, the other has no batteries. Sigh.

Today P4 invited me to her wedding. But she wants me to know that she doesn't want to go to university, so could I please ring them and let them know?

Hair Emergency

So I hacked myself a really short fringe (missed a bit) and yesterday went on a late night hair-bender-run to family begging for an emergency haircut (you all do that too right?). Sister lives a bit far away now, so I went to my mum and asked her to hack the back off my hair to make it look rough-punk-bob-ish. So much better than it was. Needs lippy and probably a beret and also possible a facial beauty spot piercing. Whaddya reckon?